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I will give one passage here, because it had a strange effect on my imagination, as will be soon seen: 'There is an old Babylonian tablet of Nin-ki-gal, the Queen of Death, whose abode the tablet thus describes: To the house men enter, but cannot depart from; To the road men go, but cannot return; The abode of darkness and famine, Where earth is their food their nourishment clay.
The earth was nothing more than a charnel-house, the skies above it were the roof of the Palace of Nin-ki-gal. But now that Snowdon had spoken to me, the old life which had formerly made the world so beautiful and so beloved came back. All nature seemed rich and glowing with the deep expectance of my heart.
But to open the tomb and, close it again, and leave no trace of what has been done, will require all our skill. And as burglars' jemmies are not on open sale we must buy, on our way to the railway-station, screw-drivers, chisels, a hammer, and a lantern; for who should know better than you, dear Sibyl, that the palace of Nin-ki-gal is dark?
Many years ago, to give place to the tombs and coffins of my family, the bones of the old Danes were piled together in various corners; and the thought of these bones called up the picture of the abode of 'Nin-ki-gal, the Queen of Death, Ghosts, like birds, flutter their wings there; On the gate and the gate-posts the dust lies undisturbed.
Another part of the inscription describes Nin-ki-gal on her throne scattering over the earth the 'Seeds of Life and Death, and chanting her responses to the Sibyl, and to the prayers of the shapes kneeling around her, the dead gods and the souls of all the sons of men.
At the next I would stop in a cold perspiration and say to myself, 'Idiot, is it possible that you, so learned in suffering you, whom Destiny, or Heaven, or Hell, has taken in hand as a special sport can befool yourself with Hope now, after the terrible comedy by which you and the ancestral idiots from whom you sprang amused Queen Nin-ki-gal in Raxton crypt?
And I often wonder whether my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, had any traditional knowledge of the Queen of Death when she had her portrait painted as the Sibyl. But whether she had or not, I never think of this Babylonian Sibyl kneeling before Nin-ki-gal, surrounded by gods and men, without seeing in the Sibyl's face the grand features of Fenella Stanley.
I saw sitting at the apex of a towering pyramid, built of phosphorescent human bones that reached far, far above the stars, the 'Queen of Death, Nin-ki-gal, scattering seeds over the earth below. At the pyramid's base knelt the suppliant figure of a Sibyl pleading with the Queen of Death: What answer, O Nin-ki-gal? Have pity, O Queen of Queens!
That farce of the Raxton crypt with the great-grandmother's fool on his knees shall be repeated for the delight of Nin-ki-gal and the Danish skeletons and the ancestral ghosts from Hugh the Crusader down to the hero of the knee-caps and mittens; and there shall be a dance of death and a song, and the burden shall be As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: They kill us for their sport.
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